


Yeah... no.

by Origami_Roses



Series: Dark!Tony stories and snippets. [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26198677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origami_Roses/pseuds/Origami_Roses
Summary: After Obie and the whole nearly dying - multiple times - by the time he'd been neutralized, Tony reallyreallydidn't like being ambushed in his own home, in the dark, when he thought he was alone. Being murdered can do that to a guy. Just saying.Or: Fury really got off on the wrong foot...
Series: Dark!Tony stories and snippets. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933546
Comments: 30
Kudos: 287





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had originally planned to make this part of [If You Say So](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349728) \- a bunch of short snippets featuring Dark!Tony (of varying shades of dark). However, as I started writing it, it refused to stay short. So now it's its own piece.

After Obie and the whole nearly dying - multiple times - by the time he'd been neutralized, Tony really _really_ didn't like being ambushed in his own home, in the dark, when he thought he was alone. Being murdered can do that to a guy. Just saying.

And what does the one-eyed bastard currently in front of him do? Ambush him in his own home, in the dark. After disabling JARVIS. And then try to get Tony to join his super-secret super-powered super-stupid-spy organization? Yeah... no. Big fat no. Big fat I-will-kill-you-before-you-kill-me no. The man obviously didn't understand the distinction between negotiation and coercion, and after Stane, after Afghanistan, Tony had a definite appreciation of that distinction. And a now tried-and-true method of dealing with those who crossed the line between them. 

He'd wondered a bit about SHIELD when they practically shoved an alibi for Stane's death at him. Ultimately, he had refused to distance himself from the suit - it had too quickly become an important part of who and what he was trying to become. His 'new leaf' made tangible. 

Now, almost immediately after having claimed that part of himself publicly, he had another - and apparently higher ranked - member of the same organization approach him using a combination of stealth and intimidation. It practically screamed their desire for control. Control of him? Control of the suit? It didn't matter - they were the same, now. 

In that instant he realized that, had he gone along with their alibi, they could have tried to put a pilot of their choice in as Iron Man (not that they would have succeeded). Now they had to recruit him to be their pilot in order to gain control of Iron Man. The one-eyed pirate asked a bit more politely than Raza had, but was every bit as much a greedy bastard who was out for whatever he could get.

As he had with Raza, Tony refused. Unlike with Raza, Tony didn't (quite) slam the door in their face. Raza had tried using shock and brute force to get what he wanted, to break down that door. He and all his men were dead. Obie had used years of carefully built manipulations to get most of what he wanted, to prevent the door from being closed. And when Tony had begun to cut the apron strings, and close the door anyway, had resorted to a sneakier sort of brute force. He was dead, too.

This time, Tony left the door cracked open just a bit. Just enough to be an invitation to try asking again. Sooner or later, SHIELD would try to force the issue, but in the meantime they'd court his favor. He would walk into their parlor as a wide-awake fly, and find out where all the threads of their web were attached. Then he'd kill the spider that spun it.

~~~~~~~

It not long before he realized he'd missed seeing a strand and perhaps gotten a bit stuck in the web. Being casually informed over donuts (and coffee!) that his company had been infiltrated by not just a spy, but an assassin did NOT change his mind about SHIELD's probable goals with regards to himself. The fact they could have killed him but didn't meant _nothing_ in this context. They knew he was already dying. 

Being stabbed in the neck with no warning, regardless of why the pirate claimed to have done it, was not the way to gain his forgiveness, much less his favor. He'd been lax in taking care of this pest problem, too focused on his own impending doom. That would change now. However little time he had left to live, he now had a new goal: destroy the spider's web, kill the spider.

The box of Howard's old stuff they turned over (and the fact they'd obviously held onto it as a bargaining chip) was not a sufficient apology. That he was able to use it to extend his life was ironic, given his new life goal, and only made him madder. If they'd given it to him earlier, before he'd given up in desperation, he'd have seen it as a gesture of sincere goodwill. He could have been cured faster and they might actually have earned his appreciation and mercy.

Now? Now he felt like they'd been given enough rope. They'd used it to make a noose and pretended it was a lifeline. He'd turn it into a fuse.


	2. Chapter 2

That SHIELD had held onto some of Howard's research and personal items made Tony wonder what else of his they had. Working with his lovely Pepper (Oh, what a godsend she was! An absolute miracle worker. He adored her.) they had begun an in-depth, line-by-line audit of EVERYTHING in SI. He'd given JARVIS a nice little upgrade and access to SI's systems to help speed things along and keep an eye on the humans involved in the process - he wasn't going to blindly trust that one or more of Stane's minions hadn't slipped past the purge with the intent of continuing the man's perfidy.

If Tony just happened to slip a directive to look for possible SHIELD influence... well, why not? 'Trust but verify' was just a polite way of saying 'I don't actually trust you', after all. 

And he didn't. At all. 

Within a week, they found three people in Accounting who were fudging numbers just slightly and pocketing the difference but were unaffiliated with either Stane or SHIELD (they were promptly fired), twenty five people in various departments who were flagged for further monitoring because of ties to Stane's dealings but no evidence of actual wrong-doing, fourteen people flagged for ties to SHIELD (two of whom were fired shortly thereafter), and 153 auto-pay accounts routinely siphoning small amounts into SHIELD's coffers (several of which were 'improperly closed' accounts of former employees). And that was just in the main headquarters, and looking only at cash flow. Tony couldn't wait to see what they'd find regarding the probable corporate espionage issues. 9_9 

~~~~~~~

When they found the first physical bug, Tony was simultaneously ecstatic and furious. Furious, obviously, because it was undeniable proof the SHIELD had been stealing from him and he didn't know how long or what had been taken. Ecstatic because the bug was a broadcast point; its connection provided just what he needed: an access path to release his new smart virus into SHIELD's systems. It didn't try to access data or corrupt the system, it just mapped it. Directory trees were traced, subsystems and file names logged, changes tracked, external points of contact noted, and a virtual backdoor created. The data itself remained untouched, avoiding triggering any of the usual detection algorithms. 

Tony hadn't sat idle while this was going on, of course. He'd created just a little bit of trouble for SHIELD to get mad at him for. His little mapping virus had noted which directories had new files added and updated, each and every time he did so. SHIELD had shown him exactly where they stored information on himself, and had given him an idea of how they cross-referenced incidents. It was only after Tony had information on how the system was set up and how extensive it was that he began to formulate a probable critical path of data flow to intercept. 

It also began corrupting data that was passed through the bug itself, giving SHIELD nothing further of use by making it look like SI had the virus problem. (Tony was just waiting to see whether they would 'helpfully' tell him his systems were compromised.) 

He had also spent time working with JARVIS to upgrade the AI's systems. It had been a while since he'd spent time in JARVIS' code, and he was pleasantly surprised how much JARVIS had grown and improved himself. The new and improved JARVIS was far more capable of helping him sift through and correlate SHIELD's massive database. They started carefully - identifying as many SHIELD bases as they could from data flow patterns and file origination stamps. He quietly passed information on some of the... odder locations to his remaining contacts in the CIA, and FBI to take a closer look at. After pulling out of the weapons business, there weren't many with whom he was still on friendly terms, but they'd accept this sort of information from him and take his suspicions of domestic terrorism seriously.

He also had a few personal contacts he wasn't supposed to know were affiliated with foreign intelligence agencies. Normally, he wasn't one for giving gifts, but he decided to be extra nice and send them each a carefully curated data packet. He hoped they enjoyed them.


	3. Chapter 3

Continued combing through SI data revealed several weak points in the firewalls and a couple backdoors which SHIELD had utilized with relative impunity. Their existence was bad enough, but the fact that JARVIS was somehow _blind to their existence_ made Tony absolutely livid. NO ONE should have been able to do that! No one outside of himself truly understood JARVIS' full capabilities, and ...no, that was possibly irrelevant. JARVIS had only been recently integrated into SI's security. He'd take time later to really dig into how the code was designed and camouflaged. It could just be a fluke that JARVIS hadn't detected the pre-existing breach, and - if so - he'd gladly take it as his own, make it better, and use it against SHIELD himself.

~~~~~~~

Further digging indicated the backdoors, at least, were Obie's doing, and _were_ actually designed with a partial knowledge of JARVIS' code - which finally explained how he'd taken JARVIS offline - though Obie _HAD_ to have had help with actually developing them... and SHIELD had known about them _(HOW?? Was SHIELD the source of coding expertise Obie had borrowed?)_ and not said a word. So much for any genuine intent to cultivate good will. _(As though there had been any doubt.)_ It might take a while to get to the bottom of it, but he'd eventually pull at every last string attached to the Gordian knot labeled 'Obie'. 

He'd also found proof SHIELD had bought weapons from Stane - the records were kept right alongside those of Ten Rings' purchases... and didn't that just speak volumes about the kind of operation they were running? 

Ironically, he'd ferreted out the encrypted files because the bank account used to pay for most of the shipments was a perfect match for the one SHIELD had been siphoning SI funds into. They'd been paying for his weapons (illegally) with his own money. Which they stole. ...illegally. _(Welp, it looked like Iron Man had a few new weapons retrieval missions to plan.)_

~~~~~~~

Tony was very careful in how he shored up the weak points. He left them apparently intact as good camouflage for a funneling trap. SHIELD's backdoors _appeared_ to be untouched, but they'd find all sorts of trouble once they opened the door. They'd be given a few challenges - just enough to let them _think_ they were getting through some new security features, and if they were lucky, they'd get a 'prize' ... though the data they could access would be skewed just enough to be all but worthless. If they were less than lucky... well, the whole new program he had sitting behind the compromised firewalls gave JARVIS significantly more latitude on how he chose to respond. Every incursion on his tech would be answered with the same, an eye for an eye and all that. In addition to taking a chunk of SHIELD's data, the response to attempted incursions could including bricking servers, destroying data, releasing a virtual EMP to shut down entire mainframes and/or causing literal fires by overloading any device used in the attempt ...depending how much they irritated JARVIS that day. There were also a few more subtle options, of course. (His favorite was a harmless little bug whose only job was to throw out false warnings. It did absolutely nothing except make them chase their tails trying to figure out why they were getting notifications of system failures.)

In the meantime, while SHIELD was busy thinking they were still pulling the wool over his eyes, he'd be taking a closer look at their operations, starting with the files he was now pretty sure were about himself, and moving on to everyone else SHIELD was tracking. Given their methods, it was a fair bet that anyone SHIELD was monitoring was viewed as either a threat or a potential asset. He was curious to see how they dealt with either case - best to know what he could be in for so as to prepare for the worst. _(and if it just happened to give him new goodies for the next set of 'gift baskets' he sent out... well, so much the better.)_

~~~~~~~

Jarvis had begun using the mapping bug to correlate information on world and local events - particularly involving ... interesting... people - with SHIELD's databases. Much of it was entirely speculative, and he would have wait until they actually took the data to be certain, but there were patterns there. Three files trees in particular tended to see updates far too regularly for comfort - "TEP-INSIGHT", "ECU-1-RAFT", and "GWUK-56341-P-OVERSIGHT".

It was far too early for Christmas gifts (and he wasn't even sure all his contacts celebrated Christmas - Edison knows _he_ doesn't, regardless of the festive galas he attends.), but Tony was very much in a gift giving mood after the latest files he and JARVIS had gone through. His current contact list was _far too short_ to spread all the love he was feeling. So he carefully hacked into the same servers he'd been in during the Senate hearing regarding his suit to find everyone else's addresses. SHIELD had been incubating an egg for decades, like a parasitized spider, and HYDRA was hatching. He wasn't quite ready to let the world's spy community know everything, yet - too much danger of whispering in the wrong ears - but starting rumors and dropping hints using established routes was a start. It was always possible he'd accidentally tip someone off that the message came from a hacked account, but hopefully enough people would take the warning seriously enough to look deeper - especially with the files he did plan to share immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays to you all, whatever or whether you celebrate! May you find joy in unexpected moments and peace in all.


End file.
